Know your past live your future

"Opening in Manhattan in 1977, Paradise Garage ran for ten years and its most famous resident DJ was Larry Levan, now thought of as one of history’s ever super star DJs. It is hard to articulate the absolute importance of this nightclub and Levan’s work on modern music, club culture and LGBT culture because it is so vast."

"I don’t know if it explains why I’ve never fallen in love or why I fall in love every single day, but there’s this poem that implanted itself in my brain when I was young, and until I reach the sort of love it describes I don’t think I’ll be satisfied..."

Paris Lees is an award-winning writer, presenter and equality campaigner – described as “the voice of a generation by i-D magazine” - and shares why Laverne Cox has been such an inspiration in her life.

'Quiet as it has been kept, the LGBTQ movement has been ongoing for nearly 100 years. Often left out of the history, many of the leaders of our past including James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Duke Ellington identified across the sex and gender spectrum; these narratives only discussed long after the heights of their careers.'

Digital artist Richard Dodwell explores his complex relationship with the work of painter, and sister of Virginia Woolf, Vannessa Bell: 'I suppose I first encountered Vanessa on one of those grey, windy afternoons when one is skint and finds themselves walking around a large national art gallery...'

'The day he died, I went through emotions I had never felt before. I recall calling my Aunt whose favorite artist was Prince. We were talking and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I began crying uncontrollably and said, “He was the first person I remember being just like me and now he’s gone.” '

'There's nothing more that i find more sad in a way, than people not living their full truth or not trying to explore what their truth is and how they could make themselves happier if they were not being so hard on themselves and trying to look like the kardashians.'

'I first encountered Derek in his garden. It was a glossy photo book with images of marine plants and strange, contorted metal sculptures sticking out of the shingle at violent angles, some with witch stones hooked around their jagged ends, like strange mementos that a ghost from the sea had left.'

'To know things beforehand is the antithesis of being gay, after all. We never know anything ahead of time. Our own sexuality is just something we eventually discover then come-out with, and our heterosexual friends/family members tell us about how they, “already knew.”'

'I was a radical, a revolutionist. I am still a revolutionist. I was proud to make the road and help change laws and what-not. I was very proud of doing that and proud of what I'm still doing, no matter what it takes.'